Cannes film festival: segregated by color

For reporters with lower-level-color badges, waiting for hours to see a film becomes part of their job.

The world-renowned Cannes Film Festival runs a caste system.

As a film festival not open to the general public, the 4,000 press members make up the most part of Cannes’ audience. Instead of improving the screening schedule and make better use of all theaters, it segregates reporters in different color badge groups, which determine how long the reporters have to wait outside before seeing a film. For lower-level-color-badge reporters, the wait can mean hours queueing in the hot sun, which is additional work time imposed by the system. For reporters with higher color badges (usually awarded to big press), the shorter waiting time doesn’t make their job easier, since they have to take up more responsibilities to cover different events.

This is how Cannes milks the value of work from reporters to maintain its image as the most privileged cinema event in the world. But to reporters, it’s humiliation and frustration, and it creates divisions among their fellow colleagues.

Such practice shouldn’t exist in 2018! We demand Cannes Film Festival abolish the caste system!

The color of cannes (2018)

A film that tells the experience of Cannes's caste system

possible IMPROVEMENTS

As festivalgoers all year round, we know how other film festivals have ways to make screenings easy without imposing a caste system on us. These we believe can also be applied to Cannes, including but not limited to:

advanced notices for packed screenings, so that people won't see hundreds of reporters lining outside the Palais with zero chance to go in

arrange additional screenings in under-utilized rooms

fill empty reserved seats prior to the screening start time in Lumière Theater

a mobile app with screening information for critics and reporters to pre-schedule the day, reserve seats and get notices for additional seats.

All these can be done to improve our working conditions in the festival, without segregating us into different color groups and forcing us to wait for hours for a screening.

In Cannes's app, it says press badges allow people access to screenings "according to the number of available seats." Nothing is further from reality than this.